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Pears with Teeth?
2 min read
I assume the pears with teeth was an April Fools Day joke. Ha ha.
I just thought it was really annoying to browse DeviantArt (which I do several times a day) and see nothing but pears with teeth everywhere...everywhere. What's hot? Pears with teeth. Popular 24 hours? Pears with teeth. Undiscovered? Pears with teeth. I was happy that at least the daily deviations didn't have any pears with teeth.
I actually went through my watch list and unwatched people who had submitted pears with teeth art (sorry). I love the huge variety of art here. I even love the drawings by bored ten-year-olds on lined notebook paper. I just think I don't ever want to see any more pears with teeth. For a while it was worse than the "points" spam. Today, fortunately, it's only about as bad as the points spam.
It's sort of like the thing where the UK Navy asked people to go online and vote for a name their new research vessel. And the name that got the most votes was "Boaty McBoatface." There are just times when something viral and funny isn't necessarily a good thing.
Sorry, I suppose that makes me the enemy of fun, but I never need to see another image of pears with teeth.
I just thought it was really annoying to browse DeviantArt (which I do several times a day) and see nothing but pears with teeth everywhere...everywhere. What's hot? Pears with teeth. Popular 24 hours? Pears with teeth. Undiscovered? Pears with teeth. I was happy that at least the daily deviations didn't have any pears with teeth.
I actually went through my watch list and unwatched people who had submitted pears with teeth art (sorry). I love the huge variety of art here. I even love the drawings by bored ten-year-olds on lined notebook paper. I just think I don't ever want to see any more pears with teeth. For a while it was worse than the "points" spam. Today, fortunately, it's only about as bad as the points spam.
It's sort of like the thing where the UK Navy asked people to go online and vote for a name their new research vessel. And the name that got the most votes was "Boaty McBoatface." There are just times when something viral and funny isn't necessarily a good thing.
Sorry, I suppose that makes me the enemy of fun, but I never need to see another image of pears with teeth.
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Mess, Static, and Grunge
1 min read
I was looking at a portfolio over on Behance (www.behance.net/gallery/Das-le…). I love stuff like that, but I have a hard time conceiving of how to do that.
I feel like I'm one of those kids who has Vietnamese-speaking parents, living in the US, with a Korean babysitter (or something like that). Being constantly bombarded with three different languages, one might take a long time to learn how to talk.
I should just dive in and play a lot.
I feel like I'm one of those kids who has Vietnamese-speaking parents, living in the US, with a Korean babysitter (or something like that). Being constantly bombarded with three different languages, one might take a long time to learn how to talk.
I should just dive in and play a lot.
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Thai Massage (Progress Report)
3 min read
No one actually reads these, do they? Maybe that's a good thing.
Anyway, I'm almost halfway through. I have 128 drawings to do, and I've done about 60 of them. The drawings are all pencil outlines and then ink wash for tone. I haven't posted a lot of them because, well, I think people might get bored of them. I feel like I've made progress in learning to draw. The earliest ones (which I will have to redraw) are hideous. The ones I'm doing now are marginally acceptable.
It's kind of a unique project. I'm drawing the same woman (mostly) over and over again in slightly different positions. I've learned how to use ink and a brush to do blended tones. The drawings themselves taught me. I tried recently to use a different brand of ink for one of the drawings, and it was a disaster. It's interesting that my drawing technique has evolved into such a narrow little niche that something as unimportant as a brand of ink makes the difference between something acceptable (to me, anyway) and a disaster.
Each drawing is based on a photograph from a series of semi-studio shots that I took a couple of years ago. It bothers me a bit that I'm so literal. I really am just copying photographs. I very much admire people who can throw some color down, make a mess, and make it beautiful and magical. I'm sort of doing technical drawing. For the purpose of what I'm doing--an illustrated manual of Thai massage--that's probably OK. But I would love to practice doing magic, like other people do.
The drawings are all black and white because the person I'm doing the book with (the Thai massage therapist whom I am mostly drawing) wants it to be inexpensive so she can sell it to her students. I'm making the drawings small so we can put them on the pages of a small book. That means we can't use color. Maybe it's just as well. I took a single drawing class and we didn't get to color. Maybe after I finish this project, I can learn color. Also, it would probably take about four times as long to do each drawing, and I'm old enough already.
One thing that I'm doing in this project that I haven't done before is that I'm seriously trying to finish it. That means that when one of my friends asks me to draw things for them, I tell them, "Yes, sure, I'd love to do that" ...and then I deliberately forget all about it. There's no way I can do my 128 drawings and start something else in the middle. I know myself too well. I can't tell you how many times in my life I've started working on a long-term project and then stopped it in the middle to do some other, immediate project, and then never went back to the long-term project. It's a bad habit. I'm trying to practice the Buddhist virtue of diligence.
I guess that means I'd better get back to work.
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Thai Massage
1 min read
I have embarked on a project to help write a book on Thai massage. I am doing illustrations in light pencil, shaded with ink wash. It will be a lot of drawings.
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Matisse
1 min read
We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last week. There was an exhibit of Henri Matisse. I'm not sure I understand Matisse. But I do see that his genius was in trying to get to the essence of the composition, as opposed to doing a photorealistic painting of, for example, dogs playing cards. I don't know what it means, but it's interesting.
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